Sypnosis
I just beat Okami and wow, how did I not play this game sooner? The basic "rundown" of Okami is that you play as the sun goddess, Amaterasu, (accompanied by tiny friend Issun) who has been summoned back to the mortal world to rid it of a recurring curse. The curse involves a tiny village by the name of Kamiki that has to sacrifice a lady in the village to feed the 8-headed beast Orochi; this happens once every 100 years. Orochi was slain 100 years ago, but history repeats itself! So let's get into how you go about lifting this curse.
Gameplay
I picked up Okami when it first came out on the Wii and absolutely hated it. Why? Because the controls are terrible. Sadly, I cannot speak for how it works on the PS2, but I imagine it is 100000000x better. It took me a long time to get used to the controls, but it works
most of the time once you get it down. That being said, I found the reflector and glaives to be practically un-usable. The rosaries work well because you can waggle your arm off and it's really responsive.
As Amaterasu, you wield the Celestial Brush, which allows you to draw all kind of meaningful squiggles. This is where the Zelda influence is heavy. Much like weapons in Zelda, you collect different brush techniques (a total of 13) that you use in certain situations. Examples being you can use a water spout technique to put out fire, inferno technique to melt ice, etc.
There are plenty of treasures to be found, weapons to collect, enemies to hunt, so on and so forth. Director Hideki Kamiya himself said that Zelda was a big influence on the game, and it definitely shows; not a ripoff, but heavily influenced.
Graphics
Wow. This game is beautiful. Well, I think so, anyway. It's going to be an "either you love it or hate it" style, but I haven't met anyone who hated it. It is
sumi-e inspired and cel-shaded. The only time I've found it to be a problem was in one of the palaces where it is really blurry. I didn't play it on the best TV so I'm sure that didn't help. Overall, beautiful.
Conclusion
I spent about 38 hours on this game, so it's pretty lengthy. Then again, I take my time with games and I dick around a lot.
I don't know what else to say other than that if you're a Zelda fan and you're looking for a new game with funny dialog, charming characters, a good story, and fun gameplay, then you should definitely, definitely check it out. I'm sad that I didn't get the chance to support this game sooner, because I am definitely happy with everything.
Rating
I give it
out of
